


His Sister's Keeper

by lunarknightz



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 07:18:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8135140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarknightz/pseuds/lunarknightz
Summary: Simon can't sleep.  Somehting's haunting him.
 
Set at some non-specific time during the series, before the movie.  No specific spoilers.





	

Even after spending a significant amount of time travelling the galaxy on Serenity, each night, it still took Simon ages to fall asleep. He’d toss and turn, contort his pillow into numerous formations, then silently count the rivets on the wall by his bunk (there were 42). When that didn’t lull him to sleep, he’d start to recite the names of each individual bone in the human skeleton- and if he was lucky, that finally seemed to do the trick, and cause his eyelids to feel even the least bit heavy.

River, on the other hand, would flop into her bunk and be softly snoring within a mere minute or two. Oh, she had her “bad nights” when the cocktail of medicines Simon had mixed didn’t combat whatever the Alliance had twisted within River’s brain.

Serenity had become a home for River. She walked and danced in the halls as if she’d been soaring in space on the firefly for all of her life. Simon had yet to develop his space legs. Serenity was not a home, but a foreign and distant land- very, very, very far from his comfort zone. Time was helping him adapt, as well as the smiles and friendship of a certain engineer. He became more confident that Captain Renoylds wouldn’t dump them out of the garbage chute the next time the Alliance threatened. But Serenity was not home for Simon.

On this night, more than most, Simon felt homesick. He missed his parents, his job, the status he’d left behind. His belongings, the people he’d called friends and colleagues- the memories of what he’d given up haunted him. 

He’d left so much behind.

Simon gazed at River, sleeping soundly in her bunk. 

Had he done the right thing?

She was still damaged. River was not the sister he’d once known, but some enigma wearing his sister’s clothing. He’d been confident at the beginning, that he could save her. Fix her. Make her whole again. Whatever those bastards did to her, he’d change it or reverse it…he’d be River’s hero. Her knight in white armor, coming to save the day, and instead of healing her, he’d made her worse. They were not home, or settled on a nice stable planet that could even BE home. River was still damaged, and he couldn’t change that, no matter how hard he tried. 

Simon had turned his sister into a fugitive, placed a warrant and a bounty on her head. He’d taken a damsel in distress and turned her into a felon.

River turned over and muttered something in her sleep. Idly, Simon wondered if she would have been better off if he’d never tried to rescue her. She never would have been exposed to the danger that Serenity somehow always seemed to find- or perhaps, more aptly put, the trouble that always seemed to find Serenity. And maybe…maybe the people who had done this, maybe it was all a mistake, and they had been working on a way to turn River back to the girl she used to be. Maybe he’d ruined her only chance to be cured.

“No” Simon said sharply as he hopped to the floor from his bunk. Simon winced as he checked to see if the outburst had woken River. It hadn’t.

What they’d done to River was…inhuman. She had been a girl, a bright, loving, and cheerful girl. The girl that slept in the bunk across from him was a completely different creature. Anyone who took a young girl…and did…what they had…would never want to reverse the process. Whatever they had done to his sister had been done on purpose. And it was meant to be permanent.

When he thought about it, Simon wasn't sorry that he'd taken River. He'd been naive, thinking that all his medical expertise could simply and instantly heal the deep damage that had been done to River. He had medical skill- he could set broken bones, heal a wound, even help someone recover from a gunshot. But River's wounds were more than just physical---they were mental, they were emotional. Maybe it was just like that old nursery rhyme he'd heard as a child- even with all the king's horses, and all the king's men, Humpty Dumpty (in this case, River) would never be whole again.

Simon couldn't save River.

But he could love her.

And love her, he did. He'd fallen in love with his baby sister from the first time set eyes on her, when she was a wrinkled pink bundle in their mother's arms. As a child, he vowed to protect her, to take care of her, because that was what a brother should do. And even now, even when his sister had undergone a metamorphosis into this thing that was somehow more than what he could comprehend, he loved her. For all of his life, he would continue to love her, and would fight for her, protect her, to his dying breath.

Being on Serenity, being chased by the Alliance, it all made him realize that he might have to sacrifice even more for his sister's sake. It was a burden he was willing to bear.

Simon was his sister's keeper. It was a role only he could fill, a role much grander and more important in the grand scheme of things than his profession as a doctor. 

He placed a gentle kiss on River's forehead, and swept a lock of hair away from her forehead. She barely stirred.

Exhaustion hit Simon like a wave, and he climbed up to his bunk. He twisted his pillow, trying to get it to just the right shape. Finally, he closed his eyes, and soon he was asleep. Images of his sister- the River that had been, the River that currently was, and the River that someday could be swirled through his brain, dreams and nightmares which someday could come true.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in August 2005. My first Firefly fic.


End file.
